20 January 2010

Nostalgie Russe

Here’s a news story that caught my eye: the Russian Cathedral in Nice is being returned to Russian governmental control. No, they’re not going to load it onto a flatcar and send it back to the Motherland. Moscow says that the only administrative change will be the elimination of the 3 euro admission fee charged to tourists.

I used to pass this cathedral every morning when I took our daughter to grade school. On warm days she and I would buy hot dogs (served in hollowed-out half-baguettes) from the vendor under the train tracks and eat them for lunch on the cathedral lawn. Some of the huge old trees were propped up by metal crutches impaled in the ground, like the ones that Dalí often put in his paintings.

Here, courtesy of Anne, is a photo of a crutched-up tree on the Cathedral grounds.